‘It was our fault’: Nawaz Sharif admits to Pakistan violating 1999 Lahore Declaration signed with India

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has admitted that Islamabad violated an agreement that it had signed with India when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister. 

In an apparent reference to General Parvez Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure, Sharif said, "On May 28, 1998, Pakistan carried out five nuclear tests. After that Vajpayee Saheb came here and made an agreement with us. But we violated that agreement...it was our fault." The former prime minister was speaking at a meeting of the PML-N general council that elected him president of the ruling party. 

The Lahore Declaration was aimed to bring peace between the two warring nations, and was signed on February 21, 1999, in what was touted as a historic summit. It called for maintaining peace and security and to promote people-to-people contact, among other measures. However, in a violation of the declaration, Pakistani forces intruded in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir, leading to the Kargil War. 

Under the orders of Musharraf, secret infiltration of forces in the Kargil district was undertaken, starting in March 1999. Once New Delhi discovered the infiltration plans, a full-scale war had erupted between the two countries that India subsequently won. 

Meanwhile, Sharif, on the day Pakistan marked the 26th anniversary of its first nuclear tests, said that former US President Bill Clinton had offered $5 billion to Pakistan to stop it from carrying out the nuclear tests. “Had (former prime minister) Imran Khan-like person been in my seat he would have accepted Clinton's offer," he said. 

Sharif said he was removed from the office of the prime minister in 2017 on a false case by Chief Justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar. He claimed all cases against him were false but all against Imran Khan were true. 

He also alleged that the ISI had a role to play in bringing Imran Khan to power. He asked Khan to not blame them for being patronised by the army but to declare whether General Islam had any role in bringing his party to power. He also claimed that General Islam asked him to resign from the post of prime minister in 2014, but he refused. He said that the general then threatened to make an example out of him.